While U.S. citizens seem to be caught in a video loop of presidential candidate debates with no election in sight, citizens of Russia and Venezuela went to the polls this past weekend.

 

Their leaders, Vladimir Putin and Hugo Chavez, needn't have waited for the returns; all they really needed to do was double-check how their nations' stock markets did over the past few months. Then they could have known the outcomes in advance of the vote counts. Why? Because financial markets reflect social mood, and bull markets mean that happy people like their leaders, while bear markets mean that depressed, unhappy, and frustrated people do not like their leaders. Socionomics, the science of social prediction that is based on the Wave Principle, makes this connection between social mood and presidential popularity.

 The results from the weekend votes? Venezuelans delivered a "No" to Chavez as he strove to become president for life. Russians said "Yes" to the United Russia Party for parliament, which supports Putin, thus extending his control of parliament even when he steps down after two terms as president.

Chavez may have thought he was riding a crest of adulation in Venezuela and that he would win the vote easily. But he lost, and one of our analysts pointed out that the Venezuelan stock market index has lost 36%-plus since January 2007. In contrast, when Chavez made his speech to the United Nations in September 2006, blasting U.S. President Bush as a devil who left behind sulfurous fumes at the U.N., the Venezuelan market was making new all-time highs, having rallied nearly 100% in the prior 13 months.

In contrast, Putin won his mandate via United Russia as his nation's Russian Trading System Index (RTSI) has climbed to new heights since 2004, going from around 500 to 2000.

 

So, one leader loses as his country's markets drop; the other wins as his country's markets trend upward. (You may be wondering: how is President Bush so unpopular during a time when the U.S. markets have been in a bullish trend? The key is credit inflation, which has distorted and inflated the value of U.S. financial markets. Bob Prechter points out that as the real Dow, measured in terms of gold, has fallen to its lowest point, so has Bush's popularity.)

 

This kind of socionomic thinking, which combines political, social, and financial matters, makes for some powerful predictions. Alan Hall, one of our staff members who has been following the situation in Russia, has just published a two-part examination of the nation that rivals the United States. And here's the interesting thing: His wave count of the RTSI shows that Putin may have won his last vote. Hall lays out all the reasons in "Sizing Up a Superpower, A Socionomic Study of Russia," which you can receive as a bonus to your subscription to Elliott Wave International's globe-trotting forecast, the Global Market Perspective. Read how to sign up for it below.